His heart (and yours)
by coffeemess
Summary: He feels like he's twelve again. Thirteen. Fourteen. Sixteen. Back in his manor, back in the charity foundation, back in the blue hues of some other club's roof where he had kissed Selina Kyle for the second time. Always noticing first, always getting transfixed into eye contact. Always following her. Never the other way around.


When Bruce Wayne is four, he wishes for a toy he'd seen once in an enclosed store window. It's all bright, silver, and enchanting. The store lights beams silly on it, shelling out the detail and creating a sense of illusion and wonder that can only attract a four-year-old child.

He's four-year-old and he does not have an inkling that his parents have most things in the world that not normal parents can usually have. He does not know that most children do not have glistening marble statues or polished green gardens. He does not know that most children don't usually have ski lodges in Switzerland or numerous rest houses around the country. He does not know that most children's parents do not have as much money as his parents do. And also, he does not know that he can have things just because he wants to.

He's four-years-old, and because minds don't think, he decides to want it.

Come his birthday however, Bruce sits alone in the middle of teared gift wrappers, all unwrapped from other shiny toys that he had never asked for, nor did he ever wanted them. Alfred tries to cheer him up, bringing in grilled cheese sandwiches and freshly-squeezed lemonade; but, his father takes him by his hand and tells him gently that he will not always get what he wants.

Bruce nods, reigning in tears and sadness and childhood innocence.

He's four-years-old and he's looking around the populated room, feeling quite upset because what he wants lies absent in a chaos of beautiful presents he does not care for.

* * *

When Bruce Wayne is twelve, his parents are murdered and the house is far too quiet.

Mother promised to take him to an Owl observatory on his thirteenth birthday. He likes owls, so he had been eager. The glittering stars that seemed to excite him so much in the anticipation for his thirteenth year has now dissolved into its miserable wake. He knows very much that Alfred can take him there for his birthday, but moving away from being twelve is now a Herculean feat.

Bruce Wayne is aware of three actualities. His mother is gone, the loudest thing he can hear is Alfred's steps, and he is still twelve-years-old.

Sometimes, when he's alone, he lets himself remember his mother's hair tumbling down her chest in soft waves, the gentle tips kissing his cheek whenever she used to allow him to sit on her lap before bedtime. He doesn't want to touch her desk, especially the day after her pearls had fallen down like descending piano scales on the dirty alley ground.

He tries to bring back her voice. It's hard, for it is a sound that will never be heard again in this wide manor. If he can go back in time, he'd capture her voice in a recorder, saying all the poetry, all the letters of the alphabet—anything, just so he can hear his mother speak again.

When he does try, her voice spills out like an insistent dream. Although… this lifeless, warm voice pulling out repetitious lullabies doesn't soothe his recurring nightmares, not like it had always did before.

He needs his mother. Alive.

And so, whenever he pulls up the blankets and Alfred closes the door, he knows that he is afraid, because lullabies cannot come save him now, as it cannot travel from a coffin buried six feet underground.

* * *

 _There will be light, Bruce_ , Jim Gordon whispers in his dreams.

He wakes up, heart pounding. The curtains near his father's desk is tirelessly dancing with the wind, looking nothing unusual, however it still clutches his sight.

That's weird, didn't Alfred shut those doors after he dropped off his afternoon tea?

Bruce leaves the curtains drawn open.

* * *

Light enters the Wayne Manor in the form of a girl with princess ringlets and eyes that can seem to find him anywhere.

It seems so, because he tries to hide and nevertheless, Selina Kyle always comes knocking.

This familiar stranger is brimming with life—like a tall glass of iced-cold water and there are droplets dripping down the sides. And he's sweating, desperate for water. If the world creates a tornado to his deep oceans, he's found her.

Selina Kyle is brave and ambivalent and street smart; has enough experience from her quick feet to scare him to death; has quirks he wants to memorize, wants to embed against the matters of his brain.

Bruce will say that she's nothing like anyone he's ever met—definitely not like the kids he'd gone with in Gotham Prep. Fitting her in with them is like dropping an unruly Persian kitten into a cage of pet mice. He'll place her in a box far, far away from them, in order for no one to reach it—in his mind and in his heart—because somehow he's trusted that the rowdy cat from the streets won't have the heart to scratch his hand.

She's also pretty.

* * *

"No offense, you're definitely not the guy who'd slay the dragons, kid." She tells him one day, while they are both balancing on a thin, marble block, when he tries to force her to read his long-forgotten favorite fairytale novel. He hasn't touched it since his parents died, but Selina Kyle makes him—no, forces and kicks him out of his sad little shell and makes him pore through the things that he's tucked away in present grief.

"I'm not?"

"Nope," Selina pops the P, and somehow Bruce wrinkles his nose because _why can't he be the guy that slays the dragons?_

He holds his breath and his balance, stops the quivering feet, and tilts his head, glancing up at the girl. "Why not?"

Selina, like a kitten, lazily gets down from that block and gives out her usual smirk. At an instance before, he might have been scared to see such expression, because Selina is _Selina_. It's different now though, and like circular reasoning, he's calm because he knows Selina _is_ Selina.

"Well, you see, I, dragon-slaying-bad-ass-hero, would probably be the one to slay the dragon..." She proceeds to cross her arms, contemplating. "… _Aaaand_ then I'll save you in whatever tower the evil witch locked you to die in, because I'm _nice_ like that."

"I'm the Prince in the Tower, you mean," he sputters incredulously, staring down at her.

She gives a laugh. "You betcha'."

And he watches her run off back to the Manor, her back to him familiarly looking like a heroine going off to war. Secretly, he doesn't want her to be his knight.

Still, this isn't a long-forgotten fairytale. Leaving the tower isn't a choice that the prince is allowed to make.

("Hero is a male term, the usage of Heroine is more likely correct in your circumstance."

"Nah, sounds too druggy for me. Plus, I'm the hero of my _own_ story, so it's my decision if I get to be called hero or heroine."

"Oh… alright.")

* * *

Silver St. Cloud can blind even the brightest, but it only takes little for the Cat to strike her claws to deflate her. And the blonde girl with the vicious scheme is apparently hollow within, insides nonexistent to the eleventh degree, very much contrasting the sparkling façade he had once hoped to befriend.

Selina has done many unspeakable things…but it seems that it's always been fate for him to trust her.

(Bruce should have done so from the start.)

* * *

Selina Kyle has always been a new species the scientist in him has yet to uncover—his brain says so, although his heart wants her for different, selfish reasons.

"So you are my girlfriend?"

"…Shut up."

* * *

"Have a nice life," the knight in red armor mutters in finality, bringing a close to the book the world has been writing since Selina Kyle held the Ming Dynasty vase in her experienced arms.

The Prince watches her go. Not eager, not angered, just miserable. He had thrown words at her, sharp words, and in his mind he had thought she would block them all off with her shield. Selina Kyle can withstand anything, he had thought.

Apparently, the Knight had left her shield today.

Deep down, he wants her to ignore the words that just came out of his mouth. _Look at my soul_ , he thinks. _Find me where I hide, and I will come out for you._

His father voices out, " _You can't always get what you want_."

And then, she walks away.

He thinks that maybe, Selina Kyle was already gone before she even left.

* * *

(But his birthday goes by and he grows taller, taller, _taller_ —)

He kills a demon's head, and in turn the hurting Prince dismisses the Gentle Dragon from guarding his lonely palace.

* * *

He's standing in the middle of a darkened room with a drink in his hand, beautiful girls on his shoulders, and a hundred other people he barely knows.

Bruce chugs down the liquids, washes himself in the artificial lights of the club he owns, and eyes down a girl with familiar blonde ringlets in his proximity. She tells him pretty, pretty things—things that can make anyone fall in a pool of lust and attraction. Basically, things devoid of substance. Once upon a time, he might have thought of it as delirious, might have even left the room with a bang.

He drinks it all in now.

 _It's his birthday_ , the once innocent heart in him exclaims. The innocent heart walks towards him with Selina Kyle, holding his hand and bringing him out to the world. Because this Prince had long gone left his castle—long gone pushed out the gentle dragon guarding his crystal fortress, and long gone tired from waiting for the beautiful knight to come back and save him.

How stupid of him to push the knight away from him, even if he hadn't wanted to.

The lights flash around him like a camera taking shots. The girl runs up her fingers to his jaw, then to his cheek, and finally to his lips. She neglects the beating of his heart. He knows that someone else would disregard anything just to lay her fingers on his left chest. The memory of her seems so much as if it belongs in another universe.

"Happy birthday, Bruce Wayne." Huskily, she murmurs. Drunkenly, he smirks.

He's never felt so empty before.

* * *

When Bruce is seventeen, it's three a.m. in the morning, and he's going to die.

Well, he feels like he's going to die. His aching mouth says otherwise. "Where to next?"

Tommy stumbles out of the low-cost club they had entered hours ago, his arm swung around Bruce's shoulders. Bruce's pretty sure he's going to end up dead somewhere in this godforsaken city, especially at the rate they were spending the night in for his seventeenth birthday. True, it isn't the best way to spend his birthday; but it seemed to be a good idea hours prior (or as his friends tell him).

Tina sweeps her bangs out of her eyes and rests her fingers on her forehead, annoyed. "Fuck you, Tommy. The next time we're going out I'm bringing Isaac with me. There is no way I'm walking to another club with my Marc Jacobs—"

"Yeah, okay shush your shithole, T. Nobody cares about your handbag right now."

The forgotten bass is still bumping his eardrums, and Grace's cloudy perfume smells as expensive as the scent of the flowers he had smelled in a recent charity auction.

She's also stuck to crook of his neck, so that's probably why he feels like he's going to die. From _suffocation_.

He fucking hates it. It reminds him of the ladies cooing for him to date their daughters and the oh-so familiar shadow of his former guardian.

Bruce grits his teeth and focuses on the cold of the moving air.

"Taxi?" One of the girls question blearily. The others look for one but the night is old, the roads are quiet, and the external racket comes from the rest of the people walking out of the club.

"I know an expensive place nearby, not a lot of people but it got some fancy music and drinks. It's also exclusive, but I know we can get in," Tommy peers over for a taxi but the streets are tranquil. "Fuck, I hate walking. Too bad Old McGeez is gone, the old chap could have driven us."

His skin bristles. "Yeah, I don't think Alfred approves of my current extracurricular activities. Let's move."

Beneath him, he knows that no one in this miniscule crowd of self-absorbed rich kids of Gotham's finest will ever get to truly know him. They will never try to understand him.

Ten minutes have passed and they have yet to reach the next corner, but they are not quiet. They are far from it rather, just jubilantly laughing and talking and squandering away. Just how teenagers should be. They look like they do not belong in these streets however, with their fancy jewelry and their fancy clothes.

In the eyes of a person he used to know, she can rob them blind.

Bruce's mind is a tad bit hazy, nevertheless his eyes intelligently pore over the streets they've walked on. Nights ago, he had been going through these streets for a different cause.

The neon sign of the new club Tommy had referred about abruptly appears in his view, but a shuffle of feet and a presence distinctly distracts him. It's a girl in a black dress briskly walking away from said club. She leaves the door swinging in its wake.

"—Catarina! Wait—" A tall boy not so older than them comes out of the same door but runs in the opposite of the girl's direction. Unfortunately, he bumps to the first person within Bruce's group, which is Tommy and his ever-present glower.

"Watch it," Tommy growled, smoothing his shoulder.

"Sorry, man. Hey—" The boy frantically searches behind them. He's got blonde waves and an immaculate face that he's seen around before, mostly in fancy galas. Marcus Mason, he thinks. "Have you seen a girl this yay tall and holding a—"

"Nope, sorry man. _Now_ can we get in?"

They enter into what seems like a posh, upscale hipster club. A few people are dancing, but the sofas are occupied with shiny dresses and polished shoes. Full of rich personalities, assuming from the drifting looks and the fact that they don't seem to care much.

About a quarter into the hour, Bruce notices the same boy, Marcus, coming back into the place.

"Oh my god, I'm sorry, Marcus. I had to take a phone call," he can hear a familiar voice say, almost too bogus-filled and unnatural.

Marcus looks confused, and maybe a bit flustered, especially when he responds with pursed lips at the girl who just 'had to take a phone call' and disappear for about most of the night—however, it is not Marcus, another Gotham elite he must have already seen prior in some fancy gathering, but the _girl_ who catches his eye.

He feels like he's _twelve_ again. Thirteen. Fourteen. _Sixteen_. Back in his manor, back in the charity foundation, back in the blue hues of some other club's roof where he had kissed Selina Kyle for the second time.

Always noticing first, always getting transfixed into eye contact. Always following her. Never the other way around. It's been fate.

And fate is welcoming him again.

The girl turns away from Marcus, black dress whistling, and walks off.

And Bruce can't stop himself, pushing forward and forgetting his friends. "—Cat."

Selina Kyle turns slowly to face him, recognition sparkling in her dark eyes. Brown-contacts, he assumes, but either what color Bruce can always discern her through every façade she puts on.

It takes about a second after her momentary jolt, which is so miniscule, before she hesitantly smirks.

" _Oh_ , Bruce Wayne." Her curls were straightened, and softly curled again in the ends, in order for her hair to look effortlessly vibrant and bouncy. Light makeup peppers her face, more than good enough to pass her off as a stunning daughter of a Gotham elite. "We meet again."

And her words are a mixture of secrets and a mixtape of memories.

Play. Rewinding and rewinding. _Pause_.

"So we have," Bruce decides to follow her on, just to see what she's up to. Again. "What brings the cat back here?" His voice echoes with bitterness, while the grip on his drink grows harder.

"Having a little fun," her eyes glimmer jovially, yet at the same time with disapproval as Bruce gives her a smirk that ultimately rival hers. Her own dims down when she realizes that she's not looking at a friend, but rather the ghost of him.

He forgets that he's with his friends for a moment. Bruce can practically feel them exchanging looks with one another, while he stays transfixed in this positon. She, on the other hand, is gazing in steady interest and her usual devil-may-care expression.

It's been too long.

* * *

He likes what he sees, more than he wants to admit, because Selina Kyle is never not beautiful. He doesn't know if _she_ knows that.

Away from prying eyes and Marcus, he pats his drunken voice down to a more serious tone she's familiar with. All the while he has to stop himself from asking _what was her business with Marcus Mason_. The room is dark and it's humming with the bass of the place's beats. It doesn't stop his teeth gritting. "Your _guardian_ knows you're here?"

Selina's stare is piercing. "Yes."

"So it's what? Tabitha Galavan is off somewhere for business and you're having…fun? No, the job's kind of unequal." His eyes watch her resolve flickering.

"Back off, Bruce." Selina growls, her posh tone dissolving. "You don't gotta know everything I do."

"As if I do not know that, Selina. You've always been like this, and—"

"If anything is as clear as this, just know that whatever I'm doing right now _will not_ get in the way in any of your playboy extravaganza." Her eyes glint, and she smirks. "I actually like you this way, you're waaay more interesting. Heard about the club you just got, put my name on the guest list sometime?"

Although, her tone tells him that she likes anything _but_ that. His left fist clenches, him feeling a bit stupid for some reason.

Regardless of the serious questions forming in his head—out of all those questions, Bruce asks, "Why are you with _him_?"

"Who?" She answers, bored.

"Marcus Mason. He's a familiar face."

"Why? Jealous?"

He can feel his muscles tense. "…Curious, more like."

Yes, he feels as twelve as he is years ago.

"My business, not yours, kid."

The last time she's called him that was when he was young and scared. Bruce knows that those are not who he is now, but the tender name and the stupid drink in his hand almost makes him feel like he's once again back on square one. He has to remind himself that he's not some Prince anymore. And Selina is not like the Knight she used to be.

Roles are changed, and they are both in chaos and war. Yet, in the middle of the pandemonium, they are attached together by delicate strings.

Bruce Wayne is aware that he stills wants Selina Kyle. Will Always want her. Always. _Always_.

Over and over again, unfortunately and fortunately.

The air thickens, he's about to respond when the door open.

The sensation is lost when Marcus glances between them, his face unreadable. "Sorry for that man, was looking for my date. Seems like I found her."

Marcus grasps Selina's arm, and consequently Bruce acquires a glimmer of expected sudden irritation. Selina shoots out a toss of waving fingers, her eyes suddenly devoid of emotion, and her feet take her with him—meaning, she's not done with whatever business she has with Marcus Mason.

A heist, perhaps? Or maybe some sort of kidnapping. Whatever it is she plans to do, he can't help but picture her entangled in _his_ arms. Bruce's blood boils at the thought.

It continues on when he returns to his friends.

"Dude, you just missed something insane." Tommy's hand yanks his shoulder towards the bar, while Tina and Grace follows. "Who was that anyway?" He leers, "You two seem pretty acquainted with one another."

Grace's heavy gaze is noticeable. Ignoring her, Bruce doesn't hear the fondness grappling for his words, "A childhood friend. I heard she moved back, recently."

The new sounds are not doing anything to distract him. It feels like he's twelve-years-old again and his mind is going _Selina_ , _Selina_ , _Selina_.

(The thing is, it never stops. Because he doesn't _want_ her name to stop crossing his mind. Not on any hour, or any day.)

* * *

Tucking in the jewelry Tabitha had instructed her to retrieve, Selina Kyle bids goodbye to Marcus Mason. A boy kind enough to ask her out on a date in an exclusive place she had to rob in, though it's not like he knows her genuine intentions besides being his fancy date.

Her heels make tapping sounds only she can hear, because most money-infested swine here are too off in their clouds to take notice of her.

Only one, however, does. Selina flicks her eyes towards Bruce Wayne and his posse. Just as she's always right, the handsome boy is watching her. Like how he's been watching her the whole night after their little talk.

Selina remembers innocent eyes. Eyes that once glanced at her and told her that he's Bruce Wayne and that _it was nice to meet her, Cat_.

She leaves, _'til they meet again_. Rightfully knowing they'll cross once more. Someday.

"Happy birthday, Bruce Wayne," she murmurs to herself.

* * *

He watches her back leave. Again.

After a moment of hesitation, he rises and follows to the door. Bruce walks out, carrying an inkling of hope that she's still there.

Who was once the Knight isn't there, though, sadly. He stands, as if he's waiting for someone. Selina Kyle is a soul so familiar, that it is as if it is destiny that Bruce will always want her, look for her, _wait_ for her and that Selina will only come if he needs her.

This time, he's not upset, he can wait.

It's okay.

Underneath the moonlight and within his alcohol-tinged view, Bruce Wayne is seventeen-years-old and once again, his soul waits for Selina Kyle.

* * *

 _(Because you can't always get what you want, but in time you will get what you need.)_


End file.
